


you are greater, you are smiling, you are emptying the world so we can be alone

by getmean



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, Fluff, M/M, Reunions, Spoilers, ambiguous past relationships, season 3 episode 9 FILLER, so much love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-03 00:06:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13329297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getmean/pseuds/getmean
Summary: Elliot has been putting things together since he got out of prison, and finding Leon in his apartment is not a good sign when he’s been fucking around the Dark Army so brazenly.





	you are greater, you are smiling, you are emptying the world so we can be alone

**Author's Note:**

> i can't believe i have to do sam esmail's work and write what happened in the chunk of time between elliot shutting his apartment door and him and leon turning up at the meet. my god, i'm put upon. this is god's work.

The shock of hearing Leon’s voice, rough like he’s just taken a hit, low enough to be intimate, is like a snap of ice in Elliot’s stomach. Cold instant _fear_ , because Elliot has been putting things together since he got out of prison, and finding Leon in his apartment is not a good sign when he’s been fucking around the Dark Army so brazenly.

He closes the apartment door after Angela, and stands there for a minute, back to Leon. He counts his breaths, wills the sickly shock away with every inhale/exhale. Leon looks good, better out of that prison issue orange, and the room is so heavy with smoke that Elliot finds his head swimming a little. The shock is fading into something close to anger, and Elliot balls his hand into a fist against the scratched wood of his front door, and then flips the lock.

“Hate to interrupt.” Leon murmurs, lofty, and there’s something amused in the set of his mouth that makes Elliot grit his teeth. “Except I’m not, really.” He grins, takes a hit off the diminishing joint between his fingers. He notes Elliot’s gaze, and because he’s too perceptive and always will be, he said, “You off it?”

“Shut up.” Elliot snaps, and surprises himself with it. It seems to surprise Leon, too, judging by his raised eyebrows and growing smile. “What are you doing here?”

“Are you mad I kicked your girlfriend out?” Leon asks, settling back against the sofa with something self satisfied growing in his smile. 

Elliot clenches his jaw and attempts to count to ten, only makes it to four before he retorts, “What, you’re jealous?” It’s childish, but so is Leon so it works. His grin drops because he’s been _caught_ , and he scowls.

“I wouldn’t talk to me like that if I were you.” He says, and surveys Elliot over his joint as he takes another hit. “What if I was here to kill you?”

“You aren’t.” Elliot says shortly, and Leon snorts and leans forward to stub the ends of his joint out in Elliot’s ashtray. His hair falls forward, the two stray locs brushing his jaw, the corner of his full lips, and Elliot cuts his eyes away quickly. It makes sense that he’d still be attracted to him, even beneath his anger, but it still feels unfair.

“Take a load off, cuz.” Leon pats the seat next to him, and Elliot thinks of brightly coloured snakes, the beauty and the danger and the siren-loud warning of _poison_. He shakes his head, and Leon rolls his eyes. “Alright, I’m not gonna kill you, ‘s that what you wanna hear?”

“I already knew that.” Elliot’s voice sounds like it was coming from very far away, and all he could feel was the anger building inside him, melting the ice of his fear. “You’re Whiterose’s dog anyway, you’re just here to fetch me.”

Leon bristles at that, his face losing any trace of humour that was left. “What did you say?” His voice is dangerous soft, and some stray part of Elliot is yelling at him to stop, but he can’t find it in himself to be scared. This is Leon, who’d pushed food on him because he was too skinny, who’d plotted with him to get hands on some hormones for Carla, he wouldn’t hurt him. 

“That’s what you’re here for, right?” 

Leon opens his mouth, closes it. Stares at Elliot for a long minute before he shakes his head and grins. “You’re fucking crazy, you know that?” He laughs, and pats the front of his jacket, searching his pockets. “You got a smoke? Sit down, dude.”

Elliot sits, not because he’s any less mad, or because Leon had told him so. It’s just been a long day. His mind skips guiltily to Angela, but then Leon is sliding a hand into the front of his hoodie to steal his smokes. Elliot flinches back, more out of shock than anything else, and scowls at Leon’s stoned, mocking grin. 

“Still haven’t grown outta that, huh?”

“I don’t think it’s something you grow out of.” Elliot says shortly, and then lights himself a cigarette too. He studiously avoids Leon’s gaze, very aware that the anger in his belly is cooling off a little, and his proximity to Leon is making his heart squeeze in his chest. It’d been so long that he’d stopped wondering if Leon was still okay, he had just pushed him to the back of his mind where Shayla lived too. Maybe half the anger was over whatever abandonment his stupid brain had perceived. He takes a harsh drag off his cigarette, eyes on the floor. 

“So how are you, bro?” Leon’s voice is amused, like he was in on a joke that Elliot wasn’t. Elliot rolls his eyes, shoots him a look that he knows is a little too wide eyed and crazed. He doesn’t care. Long day.

“Are you kidding me?” He asks, and Leon just shrugs, a languid movement. His eyes are heavy lidded, and Elliot finds himself with his gaze on Leon’s soft, full mouth before he even knows what he’s doing. “I’m great.” There’s something welling in his throat that is either tears or anger, and he isn’t sure what the difference between the two is anymore. He grinds the heel of his hand into eye, grits his teeth. “If you’re really not here to kill me, gimme a joint.”

“Off the wagon?” Leon asks, like the last time he’d last seen Elliot, _really_ seen him, he hadn’t been tripping balls in an adderall-overdose glitch world.

“Weed doesn’t count.” His voice sounds post-coital, and Elliot scrambles back from that thought. It’s already too much that he’s got Leon here, the new, dangerous Leon, acting all jealous and bratty, without conflating any of that prison mess into it. When he closes his eyes, he feels the phantom touch of Leon’s palms to his sweaty, stubbly cheeks, and he savours it for a long, dragging moment. Half stoned memory, half razor sharp fantasy. He isn’t sure if it even happened.

Leon’s hand touches the back of his, and when Elliot cracks one eye open there is a joint in his periphery and he snatches it before he can think twice. Leon laughs, full bodied, seriously amused, and Elliot just ignores him. Fuck him and his big hands and the sheer amount of blood on them and his long legs and his gentle mouth. He lights his joint off the end of his half-smoked cigarette, stubs it out in the ashtray and melts back against the sofa with a sigh. He can’t look at Leon, not yet, because it’s so alien to see him in his apartment that his brain does that frozen thing it’d done when he’d first heard his voice. The room feels too small, too intimate, Leon’s knee so close to Elliot’s, the smell of his cologne in his nose. 

“This is weird.” Elliot offers into the silence, and Leon just hums. He shifts, that agonising inch of space between his knee and Elliot’s closes, and Elliot feels himself light up all warm and yearning just below his sternum. He wonders if his face is red, slouches further back into the sofa and takes a hit to hide it. “You’re really not here to kill me?”

“Was that really your girlfriend?” Leon asks instead of answering him, and Elliot grits his teeth and makes a successful count to ten this time. 

“No.” He takes a breath. “Are you gonna kill me?”

“Because like, I get it bro, but really?” He turns to face him now and Elliot levels him a look which he _knows_ is caustic but rolls of Leon like it’s nothing. “Dude, she was wearing her sweater inside out. I know you like ‘em crazy but.” He shrugs, pulling a face, and Elliot thinks, _you’d know about me liking them crazy._

He doesn’t say it out loud, because he apparently does have some modicum of self preservation left in him. He watches Leon watch him take a hit off his pilfered joint, holds it to a count of three before saying, “I know everything about you, now.” Leon is silent, finally, and Elliot takes the opportunity to really look at him, savour the moment. It’s been a lifetime since he’d last seen him, since he’d dropped out of his life as suddenly as he’d came. The fact that it was all premeditated hurt only a little more than the loss. Elliot’s voice is frustratingly shaky when he says, “How much of it was a lie?”

Phantom hands on his strung out, glitching face. Leon tucking Elliot’s head into the curve between shoulder and neck, where he smelled like sweat and skin. For the first time, Leon’s expression softens into something genuine. Then Elliot blinks, and it’s gone, and Leon is glancing at his phone and stubbing out his cigarette while Elliot sits with his joint and wonders sluggishly if he’d imagined it. 

“Cuz, we gotta _go_.” Leon said, already by the door pulling his shoes on. “Bring the jay.”

“You took your shoes off?” Elliot splutters, because that’s what he chooses to focus on right now, apparently. Then, “Wait, where’re we going?”

“‘Course I took my shoes off,” Leon muttered, holding the door open with an odd, closed off expression on his face. “Mama raised me _right_. Now, c’mon.”

\------

They share the rest of the joint as they walk, and Elliot has successfully identified the lump in his throat as shame, now. Shame, maybe embarrassment, making him cringe every time he lets his thoughts drift towards _then_.

Leon is uncharacteristically silent, and for once Elliot resents that. He doesn’t want to be left in the spiral of thoughts his mind is dragging him down in. The shame and the self-doubt and the sickly feeling of being _manipulated_. He takes a harsh drag off the joint and wishes it was having much effect on him besides making him more anxious. He glances out of the safe barrier of his hood, scans the sidewalk for suits, scans Leon’s strange, silent profile. He can’t even find it within him to care about where Leon is taking him. Whiterose, probably. He’s been under her thumb from the very beginning, after all. 

He wants Leon to say something, anything. Some stupid, flippant comment as though he can’t read the room even though Elliot knows he can, too well. Leon’s persona is so carefully constructed that Elliot should’ve seen it sooner. The fact that he let himself believe in the care Leon showed him burns through him like poison. Is that just how touch starved he is? That he’ll mistake a bid to get near him to keep an eye on him as genuine affection? It makes him wanna break something, to isolate himself, to yell at Leon until he’s hoarse in this throat. It’s unbearable, like something under his skin. 

Leon passes him back the joint, and Elliot takes it silently. The only sounds are their feet on the sidewalk, the occasional passing car. It’s cold, it’s past curfew, it feels like they could be the only people in the whole world. The thought makes him feel brave and nervous all at once. Elliot’s breath is smoke in the October air, he can’t feet his feet through his worn-through sneakers. 

“Where are we going?” Elliot asks, again, hands stuffed deep in the pockets of his thin hoodie. He was shivering by now, and trying to hide it from Leon as best he could. 

“That’s on a need to know, dude.” Leon says, and flicks the ends of the joint away in an arc of scattered embers. They pass under a streetlamp, the ugly yellow light picking out Leon’s brow, his nose, the tops of his cheekbones. His eyes are in darkness, like a skull for that brief moment, until they step back into the darkness of the night. Elliot drops his eyes back to his feet, perturbed. 

“The fact that you’re taking me there right _now_ doesn’t mean I need to know?” Elliot mutters into his collar. The look Leon shoots him is playful.

“That’s right.” His eyes curve into something softer, more affectionate. When they need to cross the street, Leon leads him with a hand at Elliot’s elbow, the touch unconscious and lingering. Something is beginning to build itself in Elliot’s head, just out of reach, just partially realised enough to be useless. The touch reminds him of long hours with his head nodding over books in the library after forcing himself to stay awake all night, to keep Mr. Robot at bay. Leon’s hand at his shoulder, thumb curving over his collarbone and his fingers hot against the bare skin of Elliot’s neck. Shaking him awake. _Sleepless night again, huh, cuz?_ Can a memory that vivid be invented? Could the affection and the familiarity in Leon’s touch be insincere? 

“What’s wrong?” Leon asks, coming close to bump Elliot with his elbow before they veer apart again to skirt a burst open bag of trash on the sidewalk. Elliot doesn’t reply, shoots Leon a look that he hopes is disparaging enough. “What? You’re hurting. Did I really ruin your date with that blonde so bad?”

It’s that which bugs Elliot so bad. The knowledge of the hurt but the refusal to take responsibility for it. Against all odds, Elliot _knows_ Leon, or at least some version of him. He knows that Leon is too perceptive to not catch that his presence is painful, and the fact that he’s ignoring it somehow hurts worse than the loss and the lies and the whole stupid affair. “It wasn’t a date.” He says, shortly. “She thinks Whiterose can turn back time.” If the words come out a little pointed and mean, well. Leon never takes things to heart anyway.

Leon whistles, and then laughs. “Shit, she’s snapped, huh?”

“ _Someone_ used her to orchestrate Phase Two.” Elliot shoots back, and if his words were any more pointed Leon would be in shreds. All he does is laugh, dopey and stoned.

“Don’t look at me, man.” A passing cop car lights them both in its headlights, and slows. “I’m just Whiterose’s dog, ain’t I?” The look he throws Elliot is sly, the corner of his mouth quirked as he raises his hand to wave the car on. Elliot watches it go, an uneasy feeling in his stomach. How many pockets does Dark Army have their hands in? 

“She’s really convinced.” He says distantly, watching the cop car’s headlights fade away into the night. “She thinks it’ll bring our parents back.” Leon is walking close to him again, and Elliot can’t stop thinking about the solid heat of his lanky body, about the blood on his hands and the invisible mask on his face. It’s a confusing mess that he gets more wound up into with each passing minute, each contradictory thing Leon does.

“‘S that what you’d do if you could turn back time?” Leon asks, like it’s a stupid concept that Elliot would want his father back so badly. “That’s it?”

“I don’t know.” Elliot says, watching Leon as he loped along besides him. “What would you do?”

“Wouldn’t bring my parents back, that’s for sure.” He shakes his head. “Got better and brighter things to be doin’.”

“Like what?” Elliot asks, and the look Leon shoots him is sidelong and oddly intimate. The empty streets seem emptier, all of a sudden. The space between them closer. He hadn’t realised up until then, but at some point they had started walking slower.

“There’s a couple things I could think of.” Leon murmurs, and he bumps Elliot with his shoulder as they turn off the main road. 

Leon’s phone chimes, and Elliot pulls his pack of cigarettes from his back pocket as Leon checks it. He doesn’t say anything, just tucks it back away after a cursory glance, doesn’t hasten their steps. The side street they’re on is dimly lit, a couple of the street lamps dead and dark. It occurs to Elliot that if he wasn’t with Leon, he’d be nervous, afraid. He isn’t sure what to make of that, suppresses the urge to dig deeper into the feeling, to really get his nails into it. He digs in his pockets for his lighter, comes up empty.

“You forgot it?” Leon asks, catching Elliot’s searching out of the corner of his eye. They pass under a busted streetlamp, the glass under their feet crunching. Elliot shrugs, nods. “Here.”

They stop, feet from the next pool of light, and Elliot takes a step forward at the same time as Leon, who grins when he realises how close they are. It’s so silent, eerie for the city, and it makes the night seem otherworldly. Barely real. There’s something about the sensation that makes Elliot brave, and he rocks back on his heels as he considers Leon by the glow of the far off light. A car goes by, lights them up for a second before it passes. Neither of them glance up to follow its path. 

Leon takes his lighter out, and toys with it for a second before snapping it open so Elliot can lean into the flame. “God,” He murmurs, “Makes me crazy that I miss prison sometimes, huh?” His voice is almost rueful, eyes very big and dark in his face before he snaps the lighter closed and the flame is lost.

“You’re in good company for it.” Elliot says, that brave little spark thrumming through him. The corner of Leon’s mouth lifts, and Elliot knows in that instant that he hadn’t been lied to. The knowledge bolsters him, he takes a drag off his cigarette just for something to do with his hands. Leon’s eyes follow the path his cigarette, the smirk growing. 

“For being crazy, or missing prison?” Leon asks, and his voice is velvet through the unnatural silence. He shifts, glass popping under his boots.

“Both.” Elliot says, and the anticipation in the air is thicker than the smoke in his lungs. He exhales, wonders if he’s still high from the half a joint way back in his apartment. Like another world. It’d explain the bravery, perhaps, or the way his heart is fluttering under his ribcage like a trapped insect. _He’s killed people_ , some little voice in the back of his head reminds him. _So have I_ , he retorts, like it’s even the same thing. The blood on their hands is not the same but it’s blood nonetheless, and Elliot yearns for the warmth of Leon’s body despite it all. 

Leon’s phone chimes in his pocket again, and he ignores it. Doesn’t take his eyes from Elliot’s face. “I’m happy you kicked the drugs, Elliot.” His voice is low, honest. Elliot takes a drag off his cigarette, watches Leon watch him. “Hated seein’ you like that.”

 _You sold them to me_ , Elliot thinks, keeps it inside. Leon’s big, cool hands on his face, how he hadn’t cared that Elliot had been crying. Those big, terrifying sobs that he normally saved for solitary nights. He remembered how they had echoed in the cell, down the corridors. Distorted, half underwater. Or maybe that was just him. It all felt a little bit like penance, or perhaps redemption.

“Leon.” He says, and then stops. It dawns on him that this is the first time he’s said Leon’s name since seeing him again, and the realisation is as plain on Leon’s face as he’s sure it is on his. “I-”

Leon kisses him. Crowds in close, a hand grabbing at Elliot’s hip and the cupping his jaw as he pulls Elliot into the warmth of his body. Elliot skims leather and cotton until his hand fetches up in that warm space between jacket and sweater, grips on tight. Leon’s mouth is achingly gentle on him, his hand curved under his ear as he tilts Elliot’s face up to kiss him deeply. Elliot makes a noise, something helpless and vulnerable, something he’ll be embarrassed about later but right now all he cares about is keeping Leon this close forever. The world has shrunk to a pinprick, this tiny spot of concrete in some grungy part of Brooklyn where Leon is holding him like he doesn’t even know how to be apart from him. It reminds him of the Adderall OD headache, narrow lumpy bunk beds and the murmur of the TV turned down real low. He grips Leon tighter, and his hand bumps against something under Leon’s jacket.

“Jesus, Leon,” He mutters, breaking the kiss just enough to glance down. “Is that a gun?”

“Better safe than sorry.” Leon breathes, and his eyes are very bright in the darkness, the corner of his full mouth pulling into a grin no matter how much he tries to bite it back. His thumb strokes slow over Elliot’s cheekbone, a sweet gesture. Elliot lets himself be conflicted for a second, and then presses close again and kisses Leon as hard as he’d been dreaming about for months. “Fuck, I missed you.” Leon mumbles against Elliot’s mouth, and Elliot breaks away to tuck his head into Leon’s neck, just to wrap himself up in him. He smells like smoke, and under that detergent and soap and skin and sweat. It’s wonderful, it makes his heart ache. Slow, Leon’s arms fold around him, holds him tight to his larger body.

“Missed you too.” Elliot whispers, because it’s a secret, too private for even the silent streets to hear. Leon’s phone chimes again, a dull buzz travelling to where Elliot has his face turned into Leon’s chest. “Leon.” He says again, just to feel the name in his mouth. “I’m not sorry for getting mad at you.”

Leon laughs, that dopey, easy laugh, like they have all the time in the world. He kisses the top of Elliot’s head. “You’ve probably got space to be madder, boo.”

“You’re an ass.” Elliot mutters, and Leon makes an agreeable noise. “I mean it.”

“You ain’t the first.”

Elliot tips his head up to be kissed, and Leon indulges him for a moment before he pulls away. That one stray loc hangs in front of his face as he dips his head to straighten Elliot’s clothes; Elliot reaches to brush it behind his ear, leans in to graze his lips against Leon’s cheek. “We’ve gotta go, huh?”

“‘Fraid so.” Leon says, voice low and rueful. “They’re losing it waitin’ on us.”

Dread drops like a stone into Elliot’s stomach. For a brief period of time he’d forgotten just why him and Leon were walking through the abandoned, post-curfew streets of Brooklyn, and with that it all came rushing forward. “Sure.” He says, and presses his hands to his face in an attempt to dispel the phantom touch of Leon’s hands, his mouth. He breathes out, slow. “Sure.”

Leon leads him the rest of the way in silence, and Elliot takes the time to smoke the cigarette he hadn’t been able to finish earlier. At some point, Leon’s arm settles around his shoulders, and Elliot lets the tension ease out of him as he relaxes into the touch.

“It’ll be okay.” Leon murmured, dropping his arm as they approached what was presumably their destination. A figure seated on a flight of stone stairs, their face lost in the darkness. “Just keep a cool head.”

“Or what?” Elliot retorted, more out of nerves than anything else. He could hear the grin in Leon’s voice when he spoke.

“And you’ll see me soon, boo.” Leon murmured, ignoring him. He touched his pinky to the back of Elliot’s hand, a small, affectionate gesture. “Way soon, if everything goes smooth.”

Elliot turns to him, then. Their pace has slowed again, Elliot doesn’t want to part just yet. “Under good circumstances, or bad?”

Leon grins. A slow, amused spread across his face. Like Elliot had said something real funny. He shakes his head. “That’s on you, cuz. A circumstance is a circumstance.” He pokes Elliot in the side. “Bring your own judgement to it.” 

Elliot watches him go after a perfunctory slap on his shoulder, turning those words over and over in his head as the man leads him up the steps. Leon’s figure is small for once, and he can’t stop looking over his shoulder for him, even after Leon had long disappeared into the darkness of the night. The ghost of his kisses still lingered, a talisman, a sweet secret. _Bring your own judgement_. He could only hope their next meeting would come under a better sign than their last.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!!! and thank u to kisha for proofreading this and pointing me away from corniness and in general being my biggest cheerleader :^)
> 
> title from 'now that i am in madrid and can think' by frank o'hara, because he writes love the best :-)


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